K. Trouli
University of Crete
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to present the results arrived at as a result of the implementation and evaluation of an experimental program of psychomotor education for preschool children. The research sample was 116 children aged 58 – 69 months old (M = 62.72, SD =3.41) who were attending public preschool classes in Iraklio and Rethymno during the school year 2001 – 2002. The children were split in two groups (experimental and control group). The research process was comprised by three phases: psychomotor skills testing at the beginning of the year, implementation of the psychomotor program in the experimental group (for 12 consecutive weeks), and further psychomotor testing which evaluated the effectiveness of the program. Data collection was carried through the ‘checklist of psychomotor ability’ which we have constructed ourselves. The research results showed that the experimental program of psychomotor education, which was followed for the experimental group, resulted in the improvement of psychomotor skills assessed by the checklist (those were body concepts and skills, space concepts, and time concepts) in comparison with the control group which followed a typical preschool class schedule. The overall progress of the experimental group was statistically significant (t = 9.441, df = 114, p < .001). The findings of this research showed that psychomotor education can play a decisive role in the development of fundamental concepts such as body, space, time which are also fundamental for cross thematic and interdisciplinary teaching in the preschool class.
Keywords:
Psychomotor education, holistic development, preschool education, interdisciplinarity, cross thematic teaching.
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